Ben Lavery-Griffiths

Tonight at Scouts we went to a local Scout HQ to do climbing.

The group received lottery funding several years ago and were able to purchase an old church next to their HQ and repurpose it - completed last November is a beautiful climbing wall!

We have Scouts who really enjoy and embrace this kind of activity, and we have others who have previously been vocal about their fear of heights.

Some of those who really don't like heights made attempting to climb to the top a Personal Challenge, and I'm really happy to say that those achieved that tonight - they didn't need to get to the top, it was their attitude towards the challenge and exceeding their expectations of themselves that earned it.

I had a go, I'm really not comfortable with heights. I made it a little less than half way before bailing - but that was far better than the last time I was on a climbing wall around 25 years ago.

#ScoutingUK

Insanely easy to install #FreeBSD on a @hetzner@mastodon.hetzner.social VPS!

Had some “agentic AI” training at work today.

Work are providing us with Cursor and Copilot for coding tasks, as well as Gemini, Atlassian Rovo, and an LLM Gateway for non-coding tasks.

Today was mostly getting to grips with terminology.
One person walked through installing Opencode, adding an MCP for Atlassian. They then pasted a Jira link into an Opencode agent that planned some work and attempted to implement it.

I think everyone was suitably impressed, but it was clear after a few questions and comments that a lot of stuff we do is either novel or very delicate.
Novel means we don’t fully know what we would put on a ticket or what to tell a coding agent.
Delicate because we don’t really want an agent snooping around our Azure tenant full of PII data and tens of production customers working in a highly regulated industry.

I’ve also recently been told I need to start logging my time again after six years.
So this afternoon was spent putting together requirements for an agent to code a small command line utility to complete that for me - can be run as a cronjob on my server.
Some other people put together an AI skill to do it - but that was going too far for me.

Facebook Memories showing me old posts of the end on uni, fun times going to May Ball mostly.
But the first post it showed above all the fun ones is a post I’d have sent out for a revision session.

I was, and still am, terrible at revising. Knowing this, in my final year of uni I’d book out a lecture hall for a few hours and invite peers to come along.
I’d go through all a modules lectures and recreate slides, ben over the course of 2–3 hours I’d present them. People would call me out on things they thought was wrong, and we’d all revise together.

Many of the people who came got better marks than me, but the sessions benefitted me as well.

Fond memories of what feels like a lifetime ago.

My constituency was the first to announce results today in the Senedd elections.

2 seats to Plaid Cymru
2 seats to Reform
1 to Labour
1 to Conservatives

If there was a seventh seat the Greens would have had it.

Having done the maths, more than happy to have voted for the Greens in this election.
Will see what happens but will likely give them my vote in the next National elections.

#ScoutingUK

Currently our knives are kept in a cardboard box on top of a tall cabinet in the office at our hut.

I have been asked to take them on my permit camp, so needed something a bit more secure.

A couple of old ammo boxes with padlocks should do the trick!

Botched drilling the padlock attachment, but it all worked out in the end - and I still have two hands!

Not a bad office for the day.

Through some local enquiries I’ve been put in touch with a project that is developing this land into a safe environment for butterflies, and to attain SSSI status.

They are clearing willow from the land which is a very thirsty tree.
I’m here to take what I want for pioneering poles before it gets chipped up.

#ScoutingUK

I’m not sure if the amount of joy emptying the dishwasher of an evening over emptying it in the morning brings me is too much, or just enough.

#ScoutingUK

Last night was our first session back after Easter.

A lone wandering Cub who had been cast out of his pack for being too old found his way to our meeting place where we welcomed him with a flying up ceremony and a renewal of his promise.

After flag break we went over UK knife law, doing the classic table of objects asking whether a given item was legal, illegal, or a grey area.

We went over safe knife usage and techniques before giving the Scours a 30cm length of squarish pine after booking out knives to the Scouts they were tasked to round one end down to a point.
Once they had done that our YL taught them how to carve a mushroom on the other end.

Of course I took every opportunity to lift the pointy sticks while commenting I was raising the stakes, or holding them in the air and informing them that the stakes are high.

It was a pretty chill session. Most Scouts (even the newer ones) enjoyed it more than last year (when we did basically the same thing)

Bodes well for a greenfield camp activity.

Listening to an early release of @latenightlinux@mastodon.social (ep 381, @latenightlinux@mastodon.social) where Joe says:

“There’s this assumption from some people, of the less technical people in management or whatever, that AI and agentic bullshit is a great boon for productivity and speed”

It reminded me of my own employer’s messaging around AI.
They are saying that these tools we can be “10x engineers”.

And I don’t wholly disagree with them, but I do think they’ve made the assumption that everyone is already a 1x engineer, whereas I think the range is more like 1.0x to -1.0x
If you give a -0.2 engineer these tools they don’t become 10 times better, they become a -2.0x engineer and move ten times faster/further in the wrong direction.

“Ahh, but guardrails!” I hear you say. Maybe, but we’ve been pretty shit at them to this point and I’m not convinced the proper time and attention will be given to them.

Interesting dream that has kept swirling around my head this morning.

Not sure of the context of meeting them, but I met two brothers. They had an old gaming rig they were going to throw away - I’ve a feeling it played Minecraft.

Somehow I’d managed to view the machine and asked them to show me it.
At home I have a fairly small office in the attic, however because this is a dream it was basically a warehouse.

They set the rig up - in consisted of a 7x 3 foot wooden wallpapering table.
My immediate interpretation of what was on top was a Blue Peter Tracy Island gone wrong!

A large, 4x1½ foot metal box, about two inches high, sat along the table. On one end was a large button covered in grey rubber.
All over the top and sides of the metal box looked like a hot glue gun battle - but it transpired to be “historical ice”.
At the other end of the box you could see a metal grate.

In a small cutaway on top of the box showed a shiny processor - presumably a GPU.
Bits of PCB and wiring could be seen on the table surface, to the side of the box and directly positioned at the grate end. Much of it covered in this “historical ice”.

Alongside the table was what I can only describe as a Darth Vader helmet made out of an upturned black dustbin.
It rattled as if it contained audio cassettes.
It connected to the table with a thick black cable.

The brothers pressed the grey button and this thing shot into life. The metal box generated a huge amount of blustery ice that covered the GPU and blew over components at the grate end.

The game was projected onto a screen (where did that come from?) and they showed me the world they and their friends had created (yes, it was Minecraft).

When they quit the game, the whole rig shutdown - they confirmed that it had been designed that way due to the amount of power it used.

I said if they wanted it preserved I would keep it for them rather than them throwing it in the tip as they had planned.

I had the impression that the hardware was very old, and this ice box allowed them to massively overclock components without them overheating.

In the back of my head I wondered if I could get the world files out and rehost it on newer hardware.

#ScoutingUK

Last night at Scouts we were going to do a DIY session, but the leader who was doing the main bit had to have an emergency dentist appointment, so that’s been postponed.

Instead I asked my “predecessor” (he’s still joint Team Lead, but I’ve taken over regular running) to plan an alternative session.

So, we kicked off with a paper aeroplane competition - who can get the furthest, most consistently, and look the best.

Then we segued into splitting logs with an axe - something we’ve not done since this time last year.
We used some of the larger willow trunks I acquired last week which were fairly easy to split.

We finished up with a couple of games - one was basically Simon Says, and the lastly a round of Werewolves.

We also had a full house! 14 Scouts is the largest we’ve been in a while and it felt like a really good number to have.

#ScoutingUK

Tonight we were due to do the DIY badge.

Three stations:
- Safety and isolating utilities
- Practical skills
- Change a car tyre, check oil levels, etc. (one of our leaders is a mechanic and wanted to run a bit of a session)

However, that did not happen.
Two of the leaders pulled out of the season last minute for various reasons.
This left us with rejigging the session to make it possible for two people to run, or changing the programme.

After chatting to our resident mechanic and his son, who is also a Scout, we decided to make the most of the good weather.

We created a new session around fire lighting, with a game of capture the flag, and a couple of songs.

Fairly chilled evening, and not only do we have next weeks session planned, but I’ve also realised that I included the Early May Bank Holiday in our programme and was struggling for session ideas towards the end of term, so removing the bank holiday Monday means I have less to plan 😀

I hate folding socks for two reasons:
1. Many of them are inside out and need to be pulled outside out.
2. So many pairs do as pictured, one folds itself front to back while the other folds itself side to side. This gives them different profiles and you can’t immediately fold them together.

Time to process my hessian.

Taking 20cm off the height as the stakes will be 160cm or so once hammered into the ground.

The cutting the 10cm*10m strip into smaller strips - some will go at the bottom for the stake to thread through, and others will be fashioned into a pocket on the top edge for the top of the stake to sit in.

My wonderful wife is helping me, as is Berti Basset.

@hischeekiness@mas.to

I'd be interested in hearing what your groups Swimming Up ceremony looks like. When I was a Beaver Swimming up to Cubs involved the other Beavers holding two ends of a large blue blanket and the Beaver(s) Moving On would "swim" under the blanket to be met by the Cub pack (or some representatives of the Pack). The group where I was in Scouts had a skateboard attached to some rope. The Beavers would say goodbye to the Beaver Moving On who would lie on the skateboard and the Cubs would pull them into the Pack (cue optional swimming motion from the Beaver) - if more than one Beaver then the skateboard would be sent back. In my current group, Beavers hold a parachute and the Beaver(s) Moving Obn duck under and re-emerge wearing the Cubs sweatshirt - no Cub representatives present.

Flying Up is the term used when I was in Scouts. It would largely follow the traditional "Going Up" ceremony as laid out in the Wold Cub's Handbook, with some additions/omissions: • Pack forms a circle around the Cub Leader at one end of the hut • Scout Troop forms a horseshoe at the other end • Cubs perform the Grand Howl, Cub(s) Moving On are bid farewell by Akela, then shake hands of the rest of the Pack • The circle opens and the Cub(s) move forward with Akela who announces that they have some Cubs who want to become Scouts. • Scout leader instructs the Cub(s) to fly into the Scout Troop • Cub(s) jump over a rope and are met face to face with the Scout leader who gets them to recite the Scout promise before being introduced to their Patrol.

Because I struggle to get engagement from Cubs, I generally only do the last two bullet points.

Why "Flying Up"? After a little research I think there are three factors:

1. Cubs used to get a "Leaping Wolf Badge" before Going Up, leaping and flying can be synonymous.
2. I believe Air Scouts use the term Flying Up.
3. Girlguiding uses the term "Flying Up" from Brownies to Guides which may have crossed into some Scout groups, especially those where Scouts and Guides were closely related (co-located, shared leaders, or had leaders that attended the other association in their youth).